An American metropolis where eyes are everywhere

Yahoo News

Quote from source:
Chicago - When the body of Chicago's school board president was found partially submerged in a river last fall, a bullet wound to the head, cameras helped prove it was a suicide.

Friends had speculated someone forced Michael Scott to drive to the river before shooting him - and maybe even wrapped his fingers around the trigger.

But within days, police recreated Scott's 20-minute drive through the city using high-tech equipment that singled out his car on a succession of surveillance cameras, handing the image from camera to camera. The video didn't capture Scott's final moments, but it helped convince police his death was a suicide: He wasn't followed. He wasn't following anyone. He never picked up a passenger.

The investigation offered a riveting demonstration of the most extensive and sophisticated video surveillance system in the United States, and one that is transforming what it means to be in public in Chicago.

In less than a decade and with little opposition, the city has linked thousands of cameras - on street poles and skyscrapers, aboard buses and in train tunnels - in a network covering most of the city. Officials can watch video live at a sprawling emergency command center, police stations and even some squad cars.

"I don't think there is another city in the U.S. that has as an extensive and integrated camera network as Chicago has," said Michael Chertoff, the former Homeland Security secretary.

New York has plenty of cameras, but about half of the 4,300 installed along the city's subways don't work. Other cities haven't been able to link networks like Chicago. Baltimore, for example, doesn't integrate school cameras with its emergency system and it can't immediately send 911 dispatchers video from the camera nearest to a call like Chicago can.

You know this is one of those things where if used for good, it can be a good thing, in helping crimes and making people feel safer.

But, to me this makes me feel creepy, knowing that they can watch your every move in a public place, I think that is taking it a little too far.

I don't really know what to take of this subject if it is a good thing or a bad thing, and that's why I bring it here.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

I don't know... The cameras didn't catch him actually pulling the trigger on himself, and they're convinced it was a suicide? What if he was meeting someone there instead of being followed or picking up someone.

I think it has been proved that camera's don't prevent crimes from happening.

I sometimes wonder if the world would be different if 1984 hadn't be written.